Naples and Herculaneum

Part of a floor mosaic in Herculaneum

(Don here) We arrived at the Port of Naples (Napoli in Italian) toward mid-day.

Our ship backed into the dock

Naples was one of the larger ports we came in to.

The first thing to catch our eyes was Castle Nuovo (new castle), a medieval castle built in 1279. It is a prominent landmark of Naples and the harbor.

We decided to see the other ‘Vesuvius city’ which is not as well known, or as large as Pompeii, ancient Herculaneum. Both cities were destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. In both cases, the cities were buried. Pompeii was smothered by ash, Herculaneum was swallowed by a hot mud and ash flow, trapping the inhabitants without much warning, and preserving most of what was there. Both Pompeii and Herculaneum have been excavated, revealing remarkably preserved towns.

In its day Herculaneum was a wealthy resort town.

The excavated city is below the level of the existing city The current city was built on top of the mud flow.

Excavation of Herculaneum began in the 1700’s, but a city had built up on the land that covered the ancient city, so in order to excavate Herculaneum people's homes and businesses had to be purchased and removed. Only about a fifth of Herculaneum has been excavated.

As with other things we visited, a challenge has been to limit ourselves to a few representative pictures. Seeing the ruins of Herculaneum left me with an overwhelming feeling of invading someone’s private space, as much of the remains are preserved so well and frozen in time. The realization of what the inhabitants must have experienced when the mountain blew is also very sobering.  I’ll let the next few pictures speak for themselves.

So much is preserved even the street names and occupants names are known.

Part of a grand, public bath

Time and time again we learned how much the ancient Greeks loved color. Everything was painted.

Pieces of a bed. Even some of the wood items were preserved (turned into carbon) by the mud and ash flow.

A "fast food" takeout place, according to our guide. Each urn would have a hot food that could be ladled out.

Before the eruption these were gates to the sea where fishermen kept their boats. The mud flow has moved the shore a substantial distance away

These are replicas of the original skeletons found in the sea gates.  The inhabitants couldn’t escape the mud flow, even though they had reached the shore. So sobering and sad.